


Variables

by placentalmammal



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Closeted Character, Incest, Infidelity, Marriage, Masturbation, Multi, Pregnancy, Slash, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 04:53:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/922220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/placentalmammal/pseuds/placentalmammal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of unconnected, what-if stories set in alternate timelines, focusing on character relationships and pairings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Robert and Rosalind's affair had begun shortly after he stumbled into her world, his nose bloodied and his organs in a state of revolt. The crossing-over had not been kind to him, but his sister, sweet Rosalind, restored him to health. She sat by his bedside and wiped the sweat and blood from his face, her hands cool and comforting against his clammy skin. She fed him when he was hungry, and held a glass to his lips when he was thirsty. She read to him (Hamlet, with its mad prince and duplicitous king, was an especial favorite of hers), and she played records on the phonograph. She promised that they would dance together, as soon as he was able.

Romance had seemed the natural progression of their relationship. He was already half in love with her when she pulled him through the tear. During their first dance after his recovery, he couldn’t resist kissing her.

Blessedly, she had reciprocated. And for a while, that's how it was between them. Stolen moments within the privacy of their laboratory, one hand on her waist, one hand on hers. They laughed and kissed and danced, more in love with each passing day.

She had a great many suitors, but he didn't pay them much heed. Most of the hopeful were roughnecks come to catch a glimpse of Madam Lutece (famed as much for her beauty as her mind). Some were well-to-do sons of Columbia's elite, believing that she would be cowed by their father’s influence. Believing they were entitled to her hand by virtue of their old money and older names.

Robert enjoyed chasing these men away. He would invite them into the parlor, and wait until they had dropped their guard. Then he would drill them on their knowledge of classical languages and quantum physics, world history and poetry, geography and mathematics. Rosalind would linger in the laboratory or at the top of the stairs just out of sight, smiling to herself (he imagined) at the audacity of the men come to call on her.

Robert always sent them away, their flowers hanging limply from their hands. It was his sport, and something about Rosalind's desirability always inflamed his desire for her. After he had discouraged the last of her suitors, he would creep into the laboratory and try to catch her unawares. He'd kiss her neck and pluck at her pearl buttons, and she'd brush him off with a stern "Robert, _please._ "

She never held out for long. Inevitably, they ended up in their bedroom, making love between the sheets of her massive four-poster bed.

The majority of her suitors were easily deterred. Once Robert had made it apparent that his sister wouldn't see any man he considered her intellectual inferior, the steady stream dried to a trickle. Robert and Rosalind were left alone in their house, and if she was ever distant, he attributed it to her dedication to their experiments.

Only one man was persistent enough to return after Robert turned him away. Jeremiah Fink, titan of industry. He was dead set on acquiring Rosalind's patents, along with her hand in marriage. He was a scoundrel and a cad, and Robert disliked him immensely.

Fink sent flowers and wine and invitations to dinner and the opera. He was bound and determined to woo Rosalind, and Robert was equally determined to keep him away from his sister. He intercepted his gifts and declined his invitations on her behalf.

It was his duty as her brother.

They lived their lives comfortably until the day Rosalind ran from the breakfast table. Robert followed her into the bathroom and held her hair back while she vomited, kissing her afterwards despite her protests (" _really_ , Robert") He thought nothing of her illness (small sicknesses were inevitable and nothing to worry about) until it happened again the next morning, and the morning after.

The vomiting continued. A week later, she reported a disruption in her monthly cycle. She was grimly realistic about her condition, but Robert remained in denial until her dresses began to strain at the seams, the change in her figure too pronounced to conceal with clever corseting.

He begged her to marry him, then. "We'll elope," he said, wildly, desperately. "No one will know. We can leave Columbia. We'll be just another dumb mick couple in Brooklyn with more kids than sense."

"Robert, don't be coarse," she scolded. "I'm never going back to _that_ life."

She meant the meanness and poverty of the tenement buildings, where unloved children swarmed barefoot over the stoops and learned the tough language of the streets. The place where they'd been O'Leary instead of Lutece, Robby and Rosie instead of Robert and Rosalind. Their common origin, their shared secret.

"Rosalind," he cried, "then what are you going to _do_?"

She went to Lady Comstock, whose kindness softened her husband's anger. A groom was procured, a wedding arranged.

On October 31st, 1909, Rosalind Lutece put on her best dress (green silk, so snug across her belly she looked fit to burst) and married Jeremiah Fink in the parlor of Comstock Manor. Preacher Witting performed the ceremony, and Father Comstock later remarked that she was damned lucky he was blind, and hadn't had to see her shame.

Father Comstock had given her away, standing scowling at her side like a soldier at attention. Lady Comstock had cried (Robert suspected she cried at all weddings, regardless of the circumstances). Fink looked like the cat that swallowed the canary, Rosalind like a solemn Madonna.

Robert did not cry until he returned home to his empty laboratory. He got very drunk and climbed into her bed, which still smelled so sweetly of her.

Five months later, she had a son. She named him Jeremiah.

Robert went around to visit her as soon as he was able. Jeremiah had a head of bright red hair, completely unlike Fink's. He trembled when he held the baby, then went home, and got drunk again. He fell into a bed which no longer smelled of her, and wept again.

The rest of Rosalind's children (and there were four more of those) resembled their father: dark hair and brown eyes, Roman noses and thin lips. Jeremiah stood out among them, a cardinal among crows. His skin was fair and freckled, his eyes were blue as the distant ocean, blue as his mother's.

Blue as his father's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And finally, the debut of my long-standing "the Luteces are secretly Irish" headcanon.


	2. Chapter 2

Daisy wasn't half as gentle as her name implied. She was innocent of the crime she was famous for, but she wasn't a soft woman. Her hands and mentality were rough and calloused, souvenirs of a difficult life.

Her grandparents had been slaves, her parents migrant farmers. She had been a scullery maid in a rich woman's house. Now, she was a revolutionary leader, and Booker DeWitt was her lieutenant.

"Bring us the girl, wipe away the debt."

Except, there bad been no girl. The statue on Monument Island was empty, abandoned. He had found a series of rooms, richly furnished but thick with dust. The girl had died or been taken away, and there were no more telegrams from his employers. The job was impossible, the contract was broken.

Initially, he hadn't liked Daisy. She was brusque, fiery, unrepentant. Booker believed he was beyond redemption, Daisy didn't believe in redemption. She refused to apologize for her past, choosing instead to seize the present and shape her future.

"Whatever you done," she said "The Vox have a place for you, Booker."

Daisy baptized him in fire and absolved him of his sins. Hers was a world of righteous violence and desperate last stands, ideal for a tin soldier looking to go down in a blaze of glory. Booker didn't believe in God, but he believed in Daisy Fitzroy.

Their first kiss was three weeks to the day after their first meeting.

Columbia's prison was full of men and women and children being held indefinitely without benefit of charge or trial. Above ground, it was neoclassical elegance: marble busts and bronze seals, vaulted ceilings and solemn paneling. But below, it was medieval brutality: prisoners beaten and bloodied, no toilets or shower facilities, beds of straw, soaked with urine, and meals of bread, laced with mold.

Every man, woman, and child held there was a potential ally. Every officer was an enemy.

The Vox Populi knew their way around the city's back alleys and utility doors. A janitor turned soldier showed Booker, Daisy, and the rest of their small strike team the hidden pathway that lead to the back of the prison. They primed a bundle of homemade explosives and blew their way through the prison's marble walls and into the chief-of-police's private office. She sounded the alarms, but Daisy opened her throat before she could scream.

Their group fought their way from the top floor to the first, and then down into the basement. Booker counted at least twenty-five dead (twenty or more of the Founders, and five Vox made martyrs). Daisy lifted the keys from a corpse, and they made their way through the narrow halls of crowded cells, opening one door and moving on to the next before the prisoners had time to react.

It was much easier to get ten people into prison than fifty out. The area was swarming with Founders, and certain of the Vox's supplies seemed to blink in and out of existence. More than once, Booker shouldered a rifle only to find his hands suddenly empty, the weapon seemingly pulled into another world.

Somehow, the Vox and the prisoners escaped into Finkton. The adrenaline rush was like nothing Booker had ever experienced before; he hadn't expected to survive. He never did.

When they returned to the Vox headquarters, breathless with their victory, a party was already in full swing. Word of their triumph had preceded them. Fiddles had been brought out, along with the good whiskey. A ragtag band played spirited jigs, which were gradually overtaken by a cappella spirituals. The Vox Populi sang and danced with their arms draped around one another's' shoulders, drunken, merry, and victorious.

Booker hung back from the celebration. He had always felt queerly out-of-place among the Vox, though they assured him he was vital. At night, he was haunted by half-remembered dreams of drowning, and during the day, he was plagued by persistent deja vu.

He had never been able to articulate these feelings, even to Daisy. She was too busy planning raids and demonstrations to worry about his nightmares.

She sought him out anyway. "Still hiding?" she asked, eyebrow crooked.

"Still hiding," he confirmed.

She looked out at the party, the mingling of races and traditions, united against the Founders. "That's a shame, Mr. DeWitt. I do believe Scripture has something to say about light and bushel baskets."

"I didn't know you were a praying woman, Daisy."

She scoffed. "I'm not. But I know special when I see it, Mr. DeWitt. And you," she punctuated the sentence with a finger, jabbed into his chest. "Are special."

"Special," he said. "In what way?"

"Just special, is all." She looked him up and down, smirking.

"Special," he repeated, tasting the word on his tongue. "Special as you?" She was shorter than him by several inches, had to tip her head back to look him in the eye. But she had a presence, something that drew your eyes to her, no matter who else was in the room.

She paused for consideration. "No," she conceded. "But few people are." She was standing closer to him than she needed to, smiling wolfishly.

It would have been impossible not to kiss her.

That was the beginning of their "romance." Booker was loathe to describe it in such terms. Their relationship was two parts rivalry and one part intimacy. Their kisses were arguments, their embraces battles. It was about proving oneself and establishing dominance, not about grand, emotional stirrings.

The Vox Populi ran through Columbia like a fever, burning down warehouses and sabotaging factories. There were few triumphs like the one that had served as catalyst for their relationship, and in the absence of victory, their romance grew stagnant. Fighting had always been the cornerstone of their interactions, but the respect they had once held for one another dissipated as their movement floundered.

Booker said they were trying to do too much. Daisy said they weren't doing enough.

"The trouble is, Booker, that we disagree on the purpose of this organization." She paced while she talked, too angry to sit still. " _You_ seem to think our fundamental purpose is to sow destruction, while _I_ believe we are here to liberate the people of Columbia."

He refused to look at her while she spoke. He stared at one of the kerosene lanterns that illuminated their basement meeting room, watching the little flame dance within its glass shade. The night before, Daisy had come into his bed, and he hadn't been able to make himself hard for her. She had called him impotent, weak, asked if he wouldn't prefer some little white girl with big eyes and soft hands.

He called her a bitch, told her to get the fuck out of his room.

"I want to see the workers rule this city. And you want to burn it down." She paused to examine a map of Columbia tacked to the wall, targets marked in red ink.

"Our missions are fundamentally incompatible." She walked around the table and stopped in front of Booker's chair. She caught him under the chin, forced him to look into her eyes. "You have to decide: which side are you on?"


	3. Chapter 3

For Rosalind, there was nothing erotic about what she did with Comstock. She lay motionless, her eyes fixed on the ceiling while he kneeled over her, exerting himself between her spread legs. He groped at her breasts and thighs without a thought for her pleasure. And always, his mouth on hers, hot and unyielding.

He was a better kisser than a lover. He was attentive but insistent. Demanding without being forceful. His were the kisses that lead women to their ruin.

Rosalind hadn't intended to become his mistress, but he had not given her a choice in the manner. He came to her house late one night, claiming insomnia. He was in the grip of a vision, he said, and it was necessary to use her machine to free himself from its throes. His need was so urgent that he didn’t allow her time to dress or comb her hair. She received him in the laboratory, wearing nothing but a nightgown and quilted housecoat.

He paced like a man possessed while she started the machine, pausing frequently to examine the diagrams on her blackboards and the books on her shelves. He ran his fingers through the chalk dust and along the books’ embossed spines, almost childlike in his restlessness.

His eyes wandered as much as his hands. She noticed that they always seemed to return to her body soft beneath her nightclothes, to her red hair loose around around her shoulders. She was not surprised when he kissed her. Not pleased, but not surprised.

He kissed her passionately, pinning her between her workbench and his body. He slipped he dressing gown from her shoulders, caressed her bare skin. To her immense, surprise, he coaxed a moan from her lips. He was an uncouth, ingracious, unattractive, _married_ man, but she couldn’t bring herself to refuse him. She was lonelier than she’d known, and she melted under his touch.

Had she known he would prove so unsatisfactory a lover, she might have rebuked his advances, reminded him of his lady in her mansion on the hill.

Instead, she allowed him to lift her up onto the workbench and hike her skirts up over her thighs. She bit her lip while he moved against her, waiting for him to brush up against her most sensitive area, but he never did. He focused solely on his own pleasure, and when he had finished, he withdrew and left her there, his seed running down her thigh.

She move to pleasure herself, but before she could ease the ache in her loins, he caught her wrist, a serious look in his eye. “Don’t,” he said. “That’s vulgar.” He spoke in the same imperious tone he used to relay his prophecies, and she couldn’t suppress a surge of irritation at his presumptuousness.

She jerked out of his hold and covered herself. “Will that be all, Mr. Comstock?”

Once he had left, she drew a bath. She cleansed herself of his touch and anointed her body with sweet, lavender-smelling oils. In the privacy of her own rooms, she brought herself to a weak climax, her pleasure sullied by his obdurate nature.

The rest of their liaisons followed the same pattern. They made love, he finished, she did not. Afterwards, she would lay there, his seed staining her belly or thigh, and stare at the ceiling as he paced and talked.

In Rosalind's estimation, he came for the talking and not the sex. The latter was eagerly provided by his lady or, she was sure, by any of the doe-eyed maids in his mansion on the hill. But he could not speak freely to them; they believed he was a prophet, a man of god.

She had already seen him for the man he was. He had already exposed himself to her, literally and figuratively. He risked nothing in speaking candidly to her. She already knew him to be a fraud and a hypocrite.

She learned rapidly that her participation in his discourse was not needed. He was content to lecture her prone form, pausing occasionally to kiss her or slam his fist against his palm. All that was required of her was attentive silence, which she provided, even as his seed dripped down her body and soaked into the mattress.

His favored topics were the superiority of the white man and his divine plan for Columbia. He had nothing revelatory to say about either subject, talking in circles while she listened. “God created man in his own image, and to serve and support them,” he said. “It was sin that corrupted that image and gave rise to the negroes and orientals. Our penance, as a race, is to provide for god’s lesser creatures.”

Comstock was well aware of his own sins. “I’ve ruined you,” he said, mournfully. "I've lead you astray and now no man will have you. God forgive me."

He seemed to feel genuine regret for having “soiled” her. He beat his breast and mourned for the husband and children she would never have. He kissed her gently, apologetically, and swore that he would sin no more. But he always came back, swearing that this time would be the last.

She didn't feel the need to mention that by his metric, she had been ruined some years earlier by a professor who had done a great deal more to satisfy her.

He had been married, she had been a silly girl. For a time, she had hoped he would leave his wife for her.

She did not hope Comstock would leave his lady for her. She would sooner eat glass than be his wife, if only because being his mistress afforded her a certain freedom. She always had the option to refuse him and take up a new lover. Marriage afforded no such liberties, she feared. It would mean resigning herself to waking up beside one face every night, for the rest of her life.

Rosalind Lutece, perpetual mistress.

The title held more glamour than the role itself.


	4. Chapter 4

Booker DeWitt, who was not yet known as the False Shepherd, walked down Columbia's cobblestone streets. He was new to the city, still dazzled by the wonders of engineering and its gleaming neoclassical architecture. He stared, open mouthed at the endless blue sky and at the bright storefronts, draped with bunting and perfumed with flowers.

The Lutece twins, then dead for three years, followed him at a distance. They walked arm-in-arm, at a more casual pace, marveling not at the city, but at Booker’s progress through it.

"Oh my," Robert said. "He's really making no effort not to stand out, is he?"

She mmm'd in reply. "I expect he's still in shock. The city doesn't seem real to him yet."

"And why should it? It isn't real, where he's from."

They walked in silence awhile, watching as a telegraph boy stopped him to deliver a futile warning.

"He is quite handsome, you know," Robert said suddenly.

Rosalind looked speculatively at DeWitt, examining his profile with a clinical eye.

"And your taste in men proves as questionable as always."

He scoffed. "You have no appreciation for the male form."

"Nor you for the female," she said, mildly.

At the end of the street, DeWitt looked around and ducked into an alleyway instead of continuing onwards. The lady sighed, and her brother squeezed her arm, gently.

"Not this time, then."

"No," she said.

"Perhaps next time, then." He stopped to pluck a gardenia from a window box whose bounty spilled out and into the street. He inhaled its sweet fragrance, then tucked it behind his sister's ear.

"Perhaps." A small smile played on her lips as she reached up to touch the flower . She plucked its twin from the window box and tucked it into her brother's lapel.

He kissed her forehead.

"Next time," he said, confidently.

They continued down the street, arm-in-arm, until suddenly, they were gone, as though they had never existed in that universe at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What if they were gay _and_ Irish?????


	5. Chapter 5

When Rosalind returned from her morning walk, she found a bunch of daffodils on her desk. Robert, without looking up from his equations, said "a gift from Mr. Fink."

"What? Again?" She deposited her coat and muff on her desk chair, and examined the card attached to the bouquet.

"To Miss Lutece," she read aloud, "please accept this small token of my esteem, and my invitation to the theater this Friday evening. Yours, J. Fink." She snorted and swept the flowers into the trash with uncharacteristic flourish.

Robert glanced up, eyebrows raised. "Is that necessary, dear sister?"

She ignored him, and called out to their assistant in the front room. "Miss Browning! Send a bouquet of yellow carnations to Mr. Fink!" She paused for consideration. "Yellow carnations and aconite, is that clear?"

She turned back to Robert without waiting for Miss Browning's meek "Yes ma'am."

"Did you make any progress while I was out?" She said.

Robert rested his chin on his hand. "No, I'm afraid not," he said. "Mr. Flambeau came around with the flowers, and-"

"Mr. Flambeau?" Rosalind glanced into the hall, and closed the pocket doors that led into the laboratory. "How is he?"

Robert flushed. "He's fine," he said. He dropped his eyes to the notebook where he was supposed to be solving for the coefficient, MEW, that would allow their machine to operate at peak efficiency. Glancing over his shoulder, Rosalind realized he'd made a number of trivial errors in his conversions. In one column, he'd transposed potential and kinetic energy, in another, he'd converted centimeters to meters by dividing by ten, rather than one hundred.

She tsk'd. " _Honestly,_ Robert. You're like a schoolboy."

He set his pen down, and folded his arms over his chest, his cheeks still burning. "We talked," he said. "Whatever you're insinuating-"

"I insinuate nothing, dear brother, I only-what's _that_?"

Robert was wearing a boutonniere, a gardenia and a green carnation. He touched it self-consciously, making a minute adjustment to the pin fastening the flowers to his lapel. "A gift from Mr. Flambeau," he said, unable to keep the pleased smile from his face.

He knocked it askew, and Rosalind reached out to straighten it. "A bit on the nose," she muttered.

"Oh, what do you know?" he said, hotly. "You're the one sending-fennel and rue and I don't know what to your suitors. I should be allowed this-this _token_." He jumped out of his chair and set to pacing.

"Should be," she said. "But you're not."

He stopped short. "I'm being unfair, aren't I?"

"Nothing is ever fair, dear brother." She took his hands and kissed them. "All I ask is your discretion in this matter."

"This and all others." He sighed and let his hands fall to his side. "How is Miss Mailer?"

It was Rosalind's turn to sigh. "Obdurate. Paranoid."

"More's the pity," he said, sympathetically. "She's blinded by her devotion-"

"To Comstock, I know." Her second sigh was heavier than her first. "She says she doesn't want to compromise our careers, should we be found out."

The knowledge that they all risked much more than their careers lingered in the air between them, an unspoken truth.

"She'll come round," he said, confidently. "You should send _her_ flowers, not Fink. I'll write up the card for you, if she's so worried about secrecy."

"It would be a nice gesture," she said. "Heliotrope, perhaps. Or Forget-Me-Nots. She had those in her garden."

He made another nervous adjustment to the pin on his lapel. "If you're not busy," he said, his cheeks reddening, "With Miss Mailer's flowers, that is, or with the lab work, do you think you could, perhaps-"

"Flowers for Mr. Flambeau? Why, Robert, I didn't think you were the type."

"I'm not," he insisted, fiddling with the boutonniere. "It's just that, well, he brought some for me, and it would be _rude_ not to return the sentiment. You sent flowers to Mr. Fink, and you were rejecting him. And I'm _not_ rejecting Mr. Flambeau, I'm quite-" he paused to work up the courage for the rest of his sentence. "Quite _fond_ of him, to tell the truth."

He twisted the carnation so fiercely that it came apart in his hands, the green dye staining his fingertips.

"If I have time," she said, teasingly. "I am _dreadfully_ busy, what with my own conundrums of romance and with correcting your work on our machine. But," she said, "I shall see what I can do." She smiled, which was as good as a handshake. Mr. Flambeau would be receiving a bouquet from R. Lutece, with a card carefully written out in a woman's hand, should a nosy assistant find it hidden in a desk drawer or tucked thoughtlessly inside a ledger.

"Just...make it _nice_ ," he said. "No yellow chrysanthemums or whatever you sent to Fink. He notices these things. Pick sincere flowers."

Rosalind was true to her word. A few days later, Flambeau found white and red roses waiting outside his office door, cheerful sprigs of chervil tucked amongst the flowers. The note, written in Rosalind's feminine hand, simply said, "I think of you always, R."

Flambeau smiled to himself and tucked the card into his breast pocket. He cleared a space on his cluttered desk, and set the roses in a place of prominence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _No seriously what if they were gay?????_


End file.
